At the time of their deaths Mum and Dad were just 21. Yes, you read that right. I've lived more than half of their lifespan. I had hoped desperately it was a typo, but it wasn't. All that time wasted. All those years we could have had together, taken by that madman Voldemort.
And I still don't understand why. Why kill such young people? Why try to kill me? They weren't particularly important individuals in the grand scheme of things. They'd barely graduated. Dad was an Auror, sure, but just a recruit. Mum didn't even have a job by the looks of it, though she had just filed paperwork to run for the Wizengamot, the magical parliament.
Mum certainly had some radical beliefs, sure. She believed mages should reveal themselves to Muggles, not to rule them as some had wanted, so we could all be one people and use our respective knowledge to help one another. She thought it was wrong and depraved mages used their power on unsuspecting Muggles, wiping their memories at will in order to preserve the status quo. She wanted to end the culture of separation instantly and devote as many resources as we could towards solving the problems that plague this world.
I'm not sure if I agree. I like the idea in theory. In practice, Muggle ignorance and hatred could have devastating consequences. Islington-Lennox doesn't strike me as a man who would like to see a bunch of people with magical powers suddenly popping up all over the country. But Mum was adamant that while there'd be some unfortunate consequences, she genuinely believed people would be able to come together and work alongside their fellow man for the good of humanity.
How wonderfully ironic that it was her own sister that made it so I could not believe that, even though I so desperately wanted to.
This did not, however, explain why Voldemort had targeted her. Yes, she had controversial viewpoints, but they were a threat to the Ministry, not him. The smart move would have been to just let her continue agitating. That's the Slytherin thing to do and if there's one thing Voldemort and I have in common, it's that Slytherin is at the core of who we are, even if he used his cunning and ambition in the service of evil.
If I didn't know any better, I would have thought Mum and Dad's death was an assassination by the Ministry. And if Voldemort didn't disappear on that very day, I would have gone with that theory. But Voldemort disappearing on the same day I survived the Killing Curse was too much of a coincidence to be ignored.
Mum wrote a lot of letters to the editor of the Daily Prophet, trying to persuade people of her viewpoints. But eventually, they must have gotten orders to distort her message, because Mum's so-called letters started calling for things like Dementors being used on "deviant members of society" and magical Britain uniting with its Muggle counterpart to "subjugate the lesser races." It was a slow, insidious transition, but I caught it, and I'm eleven, so I'm pretty sure everyone else would have too. It made my blood boil to see my mother's legacy being reduced to a petty hatchet job.
On the bright side…well, sort of…I did find out what Black did and how Pettigrew died. Black betrayed my parents and murdered Pettigrew. Which is…really something. In that moment, I could understand why Lupin had kept it from me. Would Ron or Hermione ever do that to me, I feared in one moment of weakness? But an instant later, I answered myself. Of course they wouldn't. They had an opportunity to betray me to the headmaster and they didn't take it.
In fact, we've been having a lark feeding false information to Dumbledore. Apparently I have a harem of both genders of around thirty people spread out around all the houses, including some of the teachers. (But not O'Neill, that fiend. I put my foot down there.) I'm also the Heir of Hogwarts and the reincarnation of Merlin and the only one capable of pulling the sword from the Stone. Hilariously (and disturbingly), Dumbledore's been falling for all of this hook line and sinker. But on the bright side, Hermione tells me that we can launder the money Dumbledore's been taking from my vault so I don't have to pay taxes on it!
And, yes, Hermione's parents apparently taught her the ins and outs of money laundering, purely theoretically, I hasten to add in case anyone from Scotland Yard is reading this. Hermione's parents are just the best people ever, but they're undeniably strange.
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